Jay Kaufman, Kathryn Morrison, and Sam Harper

• 40 "states": 39 states + DC
• 45 years: 1969–2013
• 19 age groups: <1, 1-4, 5-9, …, 85+
• 2 genders
• 2 races (black, white)
• 6 major causes of deaths: cardiovascular disease, cancer, non-communicable, communicable, injuries, all other causes
• = 820,800 rows of data

• Estimated smoothed mortality rates using a Bayesian time series model with Poisson likelihood
• Used a truncated Poisson likelihood when number of deaths were between 1 and 9
• 1,000 posterior samples. For each:
  1. Create a life table for every strata
  2. Calculate the difference in life expectancy between blacks and whites
  3. Decompose the difference by age and cause of death
  4. Calculate age-standardized mortality rates
• Calculate the mean, 5^th and 95^th percentiles for all estimates
• Compute national trend using random-effects meta regression

• Working paper being screened at bioRxiv
• R Shiny App: https://corinne-riddell.shinyapps.io/shiny_app/

• Substantial contribution of infant mortality to the gap in 1969
• Most deaths from all other causes are during infancy
• Similar pattern of injury contributions by gender in 1969, but larger contribution in Tennessee
• Similar pattern of CVD contributions in 1969 and 2013, but Tennessee started worse off
• Ditto for cancer
• Injury plays important role in Tennessee in 2013 with opposing effect directions in men and women

• corinne.riddell@mail.mcgill.ca
• @datavisitor on Twitter